398 Lord Rayleigh. Value of the British Association [Mar. 9, 



to the action of the heat recuperator in the regenerative gas furnace. 

 The fundamental conditions are : — 



1. That aqueous vapour and carbon compounds are present in stellar 

 or interplanetary space. 



2. That these gaseous compounds are capable of being dissociated 

 by radiant solar energy while in a state of extreme attenuation. 



3. That these dissociated vapours are capable of being compressed 

 into the solar photosphere by a process of interchange with an equal 

 amount of reassociated vapours, this interchange being effected by the 

 centrifugal action of the sun itself. 



If these conditions could be substantiated, we should gain the satis- 

 faction that our solar system would no longer impress us with the 

 idea of prodigious waste through dissipation of energy into space, but 

 rather with that of well-ordered self-sustaining action, capable of per- 

 petuating solar radiation to the remotest future. 



March 9, 1882. 



THE PRESIDENT in the Chair. 



The Presents received were laid on the table, and thanks ordered for 

 them. 



The Right Hon. Anthony John Mundella, whose certificate had 

 been suspended as required by the Statutes, was balloted for and 

 elected a Eellow of the Society. 



The following Papers were read: — 



I. Experiments to Determine the Value of the British Associa- 

 tion Unit of Resistance in Absolute Measure." By Lord 

 Rayleigh, F.R.S., Professor of Experimental Physics in the 

 University of Cambridge. Received February 15, 1882. 



(Abstract.) 



This paper contains an account of a repetition by Dr. Schuster, 

 Mrs. Sidgwick, and myself, of the British Association experiment on 

 the unit of resistance with an improved apparatus. Three distinct 

 series of observations were taken, of which the two first were more or 

 less imperfect. In the third series an extraordinary concordance in the 

 results obtained on different occasions at the same speed of rotation 

 was arrived at, but the numbers corresponding to the four speeds 



